Qualla: Allihies https://qualla.com/allihies en-us © 2026 Bendyline Wed, 08 Jul 2026 02:40:11 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/0/v/allihies-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Allihies https://qualla.com/allihies Allihies: Introduction https://qualla.com/allihies/ Photo credit Joebater at English Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0. Three roofless engine houses stand on the skyline above Allihies, the silhouette of an industry that left this corner of County Cork more than a century ago. The most prominent, the Mountain Mine man engine house, was built by the Cornish engineers Michael Loam and Son in 1862, when over a thousand workers were drawing copper from veins that ran down beneath sea level. By 1884 the price of copper had collapsed under competition from new mines in Africa, the Americas, and Australia. The Allihies workings closed. The miners packed up and sailed, many of them, for Butte, Montana - taking with them the techniques they had learned and the names that still appear in Butte's gravestones today.

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Image: Joebater at English Wikipedia | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/0/v/allihies-wp/gc0v-allihies-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Allihies: Bronze Age to John Puxley https://qualla.com/allihies/ Photo credit Eileen Henderson, CC BY-SA 2.0. Copper has been pulled from these hills since the Bronze Age, when prospectors traced the green-stained outcrops above what is now Allihies village and dug shallow pits to follow the ore. The industrial phase began in 1812, when John Lavallin Puxley - whose family already owned m...

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Image: Eileen Henderson | CC BY-SA 2.0

]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/0/v/allihies-wp/gc0v-allihies-bronze-age-to-john-puxley.mp3 0:06 2 full Allihies: Two Hundred and Ninety-Seven Thousand Tons https://qualla.com/allihies/ Photo credit El Gringo at en.wikipedia, Public domain. Between 1812 and 1912, mine records show that 297,000 tons of Allihies ore passed through the smelters at Swansea in south Wales. The ore was carted down to Ballydonegan Strand, loaded onto sailing ships that risked the Atlantic rollers along the Beara coast, and unloaded again a...

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Image: El Gringo at en.wikipedia | Public domain

]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/0/v/allihies-wp/gc0v-allihies-two-hundred-and-ninety-seven-thousand-tons.mp3 0:06 3 full Allihies: Butte, Montana https://qualla.com/allihies/ Photo credit Ragnhild&Neil Crawford from Sweden, CC BY-SA 2.0. When the worldwide copper price fell in 1884, the Allihies mines could not compete with the open-pit and high-grade deposits being exploited elsewhere, and the operations closed. The Cornish miners had options: some returned to Cornwall, some moved on to mining work in Africa or ...

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Image: Ragnhild&Neil Crawford from Sweden | CC BY-SA 2.0

]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/0/v/allihies-wp/gc0v-allihies-butte-montana.mp3 0:06 4 full Allihies: The Festival, the Swans, the Mary Robinson Years https://qualla.com/allihies/ Photo credit Nigel Cox, CC BY-SA 2.0. Allihies today is small, with shops and pubs you can count on the fingers of one hand and an annual festival traditionally held on 15 August - the feast of the Assumption, but also a date that survives from the mining era's calendar of races and games. Horse racing on the strand ...

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Image: Nigel Cox | CC BY-SA 2.0

]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/0/v/allihies-wp/gc0v-allihies-the-festival-the-swans-the-mary-robinson-years.mp3 0:06 5 full Allihies: Untested Resource Potential https://qualla.com/allihies/ Photo credit DXR, CC BY-SA 4.0. There is one detail the Allihies story usually omits. In the 1950s and 1960s, a company called Can-Erin Mines pumped out Mountain Mine, took core samples, and assessed whether a reopening might be viable. Their conclusion: not at the projected operating costs and world copper pri...

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Image: DXR | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/0/v/allihies-wp/gc0v-allihies-untested-resource-potential.mp3 0:06 6 full